There have been a lot of Trump graft and graft-adjacent stories that should have been gate-ified in the spirit of Watergate, Deflategate, Bridgegate (it’s a New Jersey thing), Gamergate, Pizzagate, or Sunnygate (a fictional one from the movie Protocol in which Goldie Hawn is given to the ruler of a middle eastern country in exchange for a military base). By now we really ought to have had Madurogate, Greenlandgate, UAECryptogate, Canklegate, Dementiagate, Ballroomgate, Colbertgate, Epsteingate, Giftairplanegate, Fishingboatmurdergate, Grabthembythepussygate (the OG), and (as of this weekend) Itwasntpostedbyalowlevelstafferat2amgate, but Trump scandals come at us so fast and make such little difference, we don’t even bother to name them. So instead, we have Penisgate. That’s what German newspaper Bild dubbed a potential scandal in the world of ski jumping. According to the paper, there is the possibility that ski jumpers are injecting their penises with filler in order to make them temporarily larger so that their ski suits get tailored a tiny bit bigger. A ski suit is like Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman costume, practically painted on to an athlete’s body. The expectation is that there is no extra fabric because extra fabric provides a special advantage. I do penises, not physics, but the basic idea is that a little loose Lycra in the crotchular area could act as a sail, giving jumpers more lift. There was one study—apparently conducted in a wind tunnel—that said an additional 2 cm of fabric could result in jump that was 5.8 meters longer. That’s 19 feet for us Amuricans! In the old days of a tailor with a measuring tape, skiers could just shove a sock in their underpants to make themselves seem better endowed during the ski suit fitting process at the beginning of each season. Today’s absolute snugness, however, is achieved via 3-D body scan. The only way to seem like you have a bigger penis is to have a bigger penis. Enter dick filler (think lip fillers, but dickier). The most common cosmetic fillers are made from a naturally occurring sugar called hyaluronic acid (HA). The HA we normally have in our bodies helps our joints move, keeps our skin stretchy, and promotes wound healing. The HA that we inject into our lips, cheeks, and foreheads can smooth out fine lines and wrinkles or give you the face Kristi Noem now shares with other high profile MAGA women (depending on how many syringesful you ask for). When put it a penis, HA can add a couple of centimeters of girth. Those 2 extra cm of fabric would be enough to warrant a bigger ski suit, but at what cost? A men’s health practice in New England that uses a brand name filler called Phallofill® explains the procedure. You’re given a topical anesthetic and then a shot of a local anesthetic before a clinician “performs a series of precise injections, placing hyaluronic acid filler in anatomically appropriate layers.” The filler is then “carefully molded to ensure a symmetrical, natural-looking enhancement,” and you’re given a compression garment to wear—on your dick—to keep the filler in place. After the procedure, you might have swelling and/or bruising, and you cannot have sex or masturbate for a week or two. Of course, at that two-week mark, you might have to head back to the office to do it all again because it can take two or three sessions to get the desired results, and sessions are usually two weeks to a month apart. All of this could be worth it if what you really wanted was as slightly wider wang for the long term (or the intermediate term because hyaluronic acid does break down over time), but a permanently bigger penis doesn’t make for a longer ski jump. For this scheme to work, we have to be talking about temporary timber that lasts just long enough to fool the 3-D scanner, then quickly reverts to the smaller norm to create that extra bit of slack fabric for the sail. While hyaluronic acid does break down over time, the added girth can last years (at least according to the purveyors of Phallofill®). That means that the sneaky ski jumper would have to return to the doctor for an injection of hyaluronidase which can speed up the breakdown of HA. It feels like a huge pain in the dick. (You’re not just a pain in my ass and a pain in my neck, you’re a pain in my dick. Extra points to anyone who can place this quote.) This might be why Penisgate is just a theoretical scandal so far. There’s a rumor that ski jumpers do this, but no one ski jumper has ever been caught doing it or even been personally accused of doing so. Witold Banka, the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said the organization would investigate if specific allegations were made. Dick injections don’t technically count as doping because HA isn’t banned, but the agency can ban any substances that go against the “spirit of sport.” Sex-adjacent scandals aren’t new to the Olympics, though they’re rarely actually scandals. When I first wrote about Olympic organizers making hundreds of thousands of condoms available to athletes well over a decade ago, there was a puritanical sense of outrage in some of the news stories, but now it’s mostly reported with bemusement. The organizers of the 2024 Paris games said they made 200,000 condoms, 20,000 internal condoms, and 10,000 dental dams available to athletes and estimate they distributed 10,500. Ice Dancer Olivia Smart—who is British but competes for Spain where her dance partner is from—posted a TikTok to let other athletes in Milan for this year’s winter games know where to find the condoms. Apparently, they’re in the same place you can pick up tampons or rent a hairdryer. Another non-scandal from recent games involved the beds in the athlete’s village which were made from cardboard. These first appeared in Tokyo in 2020 and were instantly dubbed “anti-sex beds.” The theory was that organizers knew how much sex athletes typically have in the village and decided to make it harder by giving them beds that would crumple under the pressure. Turns out cardboard can be pretty strong. In a video that went viral, Irish gymnast Rhys McClenaghan vigorously jumped on his sleep box to prove that the beds were up for anything the athletes got up to. He did it again in Paris when the cardboard beds returned and people continued to claim they were meant as a sex deterrent. In truth, those villages were designed to be temporary housing, and the beds were set to be recycled afterwards. Milan’s Olympic Village, however, is scheduled to become student housing after the games, so the beds are actual beds. The one thing that is true in all of this is that Olympic athletes have a lot of sex. Skeleton racer John Daly, who competed in 2014 and 2018, summed it up this way: “Incredibly good-looking [athletes], perfect bodies, tight Spandex. Of course there’s gonna be some hooking up! Would you expect anything else!?” And he played a winter sport. Figure skater Adam Rippon, also a winter athlete, swears that gymnasts and divers have it even better. “Summer and Winter are totally different beasts. It’s like double the amount of athletes in a Summer Games. It’s also warm and everybody’s hot and naked. In the winter, the most revealing outfit outside of the figure skating event is maybe the hockey uniform. And they’re in helmets and pads.” Maybe he’s on to something. In 1988, Olympic organizers had to ban outdoor sex after finding condoms on rooftops in Seoul. That didn’t put a stop to public displays of affection, however. Twenty years later, American soccer player Hope Solo said this of the 2008 games, “I’ve seen people having sex right out in the open. On the grass, between buildings, people are getting down and dirty.” And that was before Tinder, which apparently was a games changer. Jamie Anderson, a snowboarder who last competed in 2014, said, “My last Olympics was when I first learned about Tinder. And it was the best place to go because everybody on it was just a bunch of hot babe Olympians.” Speaking of dating apps, one of the nicest sex non-scandals to come out of this year’s Olympic games involves rule changes Grindr made for the safety of some athletes. Grindr is a dating app for the LGBTQ community that helps people make proximity-based matches. Showing the exact location of other users is one of the selling points of the app, but for some athletes it could be dangerous. As the company explains in a blog post, ‘’simply appearing on Grindr tells the world something about a person’s identity that, in more than 60 countries, remains a criminal offense.” To protect athletes, Grindr is making some changes for users in Milan. It is turning off explore and roam features so that no one outside the Olympic Village can browse or message users inside the village. It has also turned off the “show distance” display which can usually pinpoint another user to within a few hundred feet. Users can turn that feature back on if they choose. As Grindr puts it, “Athletes can still connect. They just won’t be broadcasting their location to do it.” In addition, all users in the Olympic Village will have access to privacy features that usually cost extra, including automatically disappearing messages, the ability to unsend a message, and screenshot blocking. Grindr is also turning off third party ads. Users in the village will only see health and safety messages from Grindr for Equality. These measures may sadly be necessary even for athletes who don’t come from countries that outlaw same-sex relationships. Amber Glenn, a U.S. figure skater who came out as queer in 2019, said in a pre-Olympics press conference that the LGBTQ community here is going through a “hard time” in our Trump-era political climate. She promptly received hateful messages and death threats. After winning team gold on Sunday Glenn said, “I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking about being decent—human rights and decency.” Glen said the reaction dampened her enthusiasm for the games, and she struggled a little bit in her free skate for the team competition (though she managed to come in third). She has another chance on February 17th when the women compete in the individuals. I’d say we should send her some positive messages before then, but she’s understandably turned off her social media. The fact that one of our country’s best athletes—she’s a three-time U.S. champion—got a “scary amount” of hate for being queer in 2026 should be its own scandal. We could call it Icegate, oh no wait, that means something else right now. Quick Note: I’m talking to a urologist about HA penis fillers this week. I have a couple of questions. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions you’d like me to ask. Plus, show of hands, how many of you got the movie quote?Sex on Wednesday is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Sex on Wednesday that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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Think Lip Filler, But Dickier
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